Tuesday, January 28, 2014

By John Cheeran
When Churchill Brothers won the Federation Cup for the first time in the club’s history, you could not miss the big brother’s presence.Churchill Alemao (62), the owner of the club, stepped on to the Jawaharlal Nehru International Stadium in Kochi on Saturday night, immediately after the final whistle blew, with a few acolytes in tow holding aloft the club’s red and white flag. Clad in a pathan suit and bathed in floodlights, Alemao stood taller than his six feet. He is unmistakably the don of Indian football. Mobbed by the sparsely crowd that entered the turf, and taking non-stop congratulatory phone calls, there was no mistaking who was the man of the moment. It was not the goal scorers – Balwant Singh, Alesh Swant and Abdel Hamid Shabana—in a 3-1 win over Sporting Clube de Goa, or the coach. It was all aboutowner’s pride.
Alemao attributes Churchill Brothers’ Federation Cup victory to divine intervention. When asked what led to the transformation of the team which is lying at the bottom of the I-League standings, he flashed a paper icon of the Jesus Christ from his pocket and said “It is God’s work.” Within seconds, he picked another card from his pocket bearingthe image of Velankanni Matha (Our Lady of Health Velankanni) and added that prayers to her always bring good results.
Alemao is a fascinating man. A former chief minister of Goa and a former Congress MP from South Goa, he knows how to run the show. And take on his opponents. Right now, he is on a collision course with the All India Football Federation (AIFF). Alemao is against the proposed Indian Super League, a two-month event that IMG-Reliance, AIFF’smarketing partner, is trying to put together. “ISL will kill Indian football. Over the last 30 years, I have spent more than Rs 300 crore on my team. What has AIFF done for Indian football? Now they want us to pay for franchise rights in the proposed league. It ispreposterous,” says a man who quite clearly relishes the winning moment.
Alemao’s daughter -- Valanka Alemao -- is the club’s CEO. She too is delighted with the team’s turnaround in Federation Cup. But Valanka, too, is against the ISL.
Churchill Brothers’ victory, however, brings many contradictions in Indian football together. It is the first Federation Cup victory for the club who are the reigning I-League champions. Currently, in the 13-team I-League at the half way stage, they are at the bottom place with two wins and 10 points. And now the laggards have created historyin Indian football by becoming the first club to lift Federation Cup by winning all their matches--five.
Alemao has a habit of taking snap decisions and firing his coaches in the past for poor performances but he has somehow kept faith in the local Goan boy, Mariano Dias, who guided the side to the I-League triumph in 2012-13, with advice coming in from technical director and former Indian team coach Subash Bhowmick.
With clamour for more professionalism gaining ground in Indian football, it is ironic that a feudal club such as Churchill Brothers have outgunned their much fancied rivals such as Bengaluru FC, backed by the JSW group, and Pune FC, floated by the Piramal Group. Both the clubs have foreign coaches – Bengaluru has Ashely Westwood from England and Pune has the Dutch Mike Snoei and a 10-member support staff to look after every aspect of the game. But they bowed out in the group stage.
The in-thing in Indian club football is to have at least four foreign players in the starting XI, but Churchill could only field two foreigners– Egyptian midfielder Abdul Hamid Shabana and Trinidadian striker Anthony Wolfe- in Federation Cup not out of choice but due tolate signings. When pointed out about achieving success with a fully loaded Indian side and only two foreign players, Alemao said with a broad grin that he has signed two more, one of them Costa Rican striker Cristian Lagos Navarro. Earlier in the season Alemao hadpacked off his two underperforming recruits, Nigerian defender Hamed Adesope and Syrian striker Ahmed Al Kaddour, leaving them handicapped ostensibly on fire power.
Alemao has his own ways of kicking a football around. But you have to give to him for sticking with the club through good times and bad times. When Alemao says he has not made any money from investing in the club, you tend to believe him. You almost commiserate with him in his pursuit of vainglory. For, you immediately stumble upon tombstones of dead and disbanded clubs in Indian football—Mahindra United, JCT,FC Kochin, Viva Kerala, ITI Bangalore, MRF FC, Mafatlals, Premier Tyres, etc.
The easier thing would have been to disband the club and cut the losses as many corporates did. Dodsal Group’s Mumbai Tigers are almost defanged and eating grass now. AIFF, which claims to have a mandate for improving standards in Indian football, too disbanded its side, Indian Arrows. That is the rational and the wise thing to do. Butworld and football would have been much less round if not for the likes of the Churchill Brothers.

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About Me

John Cheeran is an engineer-turned-journalist and has worked in such diverse media as Print, Internet and Radio. Cheeran has an abiding interest in cricket and its politics, and in politics in general.
Cheeran quit an Indian arm of the US-based global giants General Electric in 1994 to join Asian College of Journalism. He then went on to write on sports, and mainly on cricket, for newspapers such as The Indian Express, The Asian Age, The Pioneer and www.timesofindia.com in India. Cheeran also had a seven-year stint with Gulf News in Dubai.
He also wrote regularly for regional publications including Malayala Manorama and Deshabhimani during his student days.
During his career, Cheeran has reported a string of national and international tournaments including the 1999 Cricket World Cup held in England, the annual Dubai Desert Classic Golf Championship and Dubai Tennis Championship in Dubai, the ICC Champions Trophy in Dhaka, the Independence Cup Cricket Championship in India, Asian Test Championship and a number of Davis Cup ties in India. Now, Cheeran is an adjunct faculty at Online Media Centre in Chennai.